assents
mildly.

"No one likes French mustard except Frenchmen. And a Frenchman will
eat anything, whatever you give him--frogs and rats and black
beetles. . . brrr! You don't like that ham, for instance, because
it is Russian, but if one were to give you a bit of baked glass and
tell you it was French, you would eat it and smack your lips. . . .
To your thinking everything Russian is nasty."

"I don't say that."

"Everything Russian is nasty, but if it's French--o say tray
zholee! To your thinking there is no country better than France,
but to my mind. . . Why, what is France, to tell the truth about
it? A little bit of land. Our police captain was sent out there,
but in a month he asked to be transferred: there was nowhere to
turn round! One can drive round the whole of your France in one
day, while here when you drive out of the gate--you can see no
end to the land, you can ride on and on. . ."

"Yes, monsieur, Russia is an immense country."

"To be sure it is! To your thinking there are no better people than
the French. Well-educated, clever people! Civilization! I agree,
the French are all well-educated with elegant manners. . . that is
true. . . . A Frenchman never allows himself to be rude: he hands
a lady a chair at the right minute, he doesn't eat crayfish with
his fork, he doesn't spit on the floor, but . . . there's not the
same spirit in him! not the spirit in him! I don't know how to
explain it to you but, however one is to express it, there's nothing
in a Frenchman of . . . something . . . (the speaker flourishes his
fingers) . . . of something . . . fanatical. I remember I have read
somewhere that all of you have intelligence acquired from books,
while we Russians have innate intelligence. If a Russian studies
the sciences properly, none of your French professors is a match
for him."

"Perhaps," says Champoun, as it were reluctantly.

"No, not perhaps, but certainly! It's no use your frowning, it's
the truth I am speaking. The Russian intelligence is an inventive
intelligence. Only of course he is not given a free outlet for it,
and he is no hand at boasting. He will invent something--and break
it or give it to the children to play with, while your Frenchman
will invent some nonsensical thing and make an uproar for all the
world to hear it. The other day Iona the coachman carved a little
man out of wood, if you pull the little man by a thread he plays
unseemly antics. But Iona does not brag of